6 easy tips to get started in night sky photography.
Photographing the night sky can seem difficult, but if you know the basics and spend som time practicing, you will get nice and sharp photos of the stars in no time. In this article I will give you 6 basic tips to help you get started photographing the night
1. Bring a headlamp or a torch
This might seem obvious but when you are out capturing the night sky it will be dark and I don't know how many times I have forgotten to bring my headlamp. I recommend to get a headlamp over a torch because it is more convenient to have your light source on your head rather than in your hands at the same time you are dialing in your camera settings.
2.Sett your camera dial to manual
To capture the night sky, you need to capture as much light as possible and to do that you need to take control over your camera. This means that you set your aperture, shutter and Iso manually. A good starting point is to set your aperture as open( low f.stopp number) as your lens allows and your iso between 1600 and 6400 and your shutter at 10 seconds. This will vary after light condition and the camera and lens you use, so experiment until you find out what works.
3.Set your focus mode to manual.
There are several ways to get sharp stars, but all of them requires manual focus. To get correct focus for the stars, turn the focus ring on your lens to the infinity mark that looks like this♾. Not all lenses achive infinit focus exactly on the infinety mark, so you have to experiment a little bit. When the stars appear at their smalest and as a circle they are in focus. This takes a bit of practise, but if you put in som time and effort, you will get it.
Orion's belt rising over the mountain. Photo from Langevågen in Sunnmøre.
4. Shot in Raw.
This will allow you to change the white balance, color correct and do exposure corrections in a editing software or app later on. Compared to a JPG file, Raw is much more versatile and contains much more information and is meant for editing.
The stars and a mellow aurora borealis reflecting in the lake, close to Ålesund in Sunnmøre
The stars above Vengetind in Romsdalen.
5.Bring a Tripod.
When you are out photographing the night sky, it's very likely that you will use long exposures and when your cameras shutter is open, the camera needs to be completely still to avoid blurry photos.
6. Think about composition.
When you are out to capture the stars, try to look for interesting foreground elements to put in your photo, and use the rule of thirds to compose the picture you want. A photo with a nice foreground with the stars above will in my opinion almost always look better and more relatable than just a photo of the stars. This is because we who live on this planet like to relate to things we know and see and nothing is more relatable and a beautiful landscape, the stars are just the icing on the landscape “cake”.
There are many more things to learn in night sky photography, but I hope this post can inspire you to go out and try. I am also still trying to learn and enhance my skills in shooting the stars. Later on, if you keep shooting the stars you will probably come across terms like stacking photos, focus peaking, the 500rule and much more. I will cover these terms and more of my own journey in night sky photography in a future post. If you liked this post or got something to add, I would really appreciate if you left a comment. Thanks for reading and happy shooting✌️